The Nymphs of Doctor Foreman’s Macbeth.

Macbeth and Banquo Meeting the Witches
on the Heath (1855).  Théodore Chassériau.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “The Nymphs of Doctor Foreman’s Macbeth.” Virtual Grub Street, https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-nymphs-of-doctor-foremans-macbeth.html [state date accessed].

Hard to believe it has already been three weeks since my last post.  The time was needed to finish the new book,[1] though, and to get out the word a bit.  I am still struggling to recover from the exhausting effort.

On the 30^th past, I teased that a telling detail from the April 20, 1611 dairy[2] entry of Doctor and Astrologer Simon Foreman that could help date Shakespeare’s Macbeth [see my "Account of a Performance of Macbeth: April 20, 1611." [Link].].  As I said then, the hint is in plain sight and all but impossible to see.

Foreman’s entry on Macbeth begins:

“In Mackbeth at the glob, 16jo, the 20 of Aprill, ther was to be obserued, firste, howe Mackbeth and Bancko, 2 noble men of Scotland, Ridinge thorowe a wod, the[r] stode before them 3 women feiries or Nimphes, And saluted Mackbeth, sayinge, 3 tyms vnto him, haille mackbeth, King of Codon; for thou shall be a kinge, but shalt beget No kinge, &c. then said Bancko, what all to mackbeth And nothing to me. Yes, said the nimphes, haille to thee Banko, thou shalt beget kings, yet be no kinge. …”[3]

As he describes the play he saw, it did not feature three witches (joined later by another  three witches), but, rather, “3 women feiries or Nimphes”.

Shakespeare’s play, however, clearly features neither nymphs nor fairies but witches.  Having them refer to each other as “beldams,” naming the leader Heccat (Hecate), and having that name spoken on stage, would have made the matter clear to the audience, as would the recipe brewing in a caldron before them.

There is one curious addition to the witches of Macbeth, however.  In their main scene Hecate arrives midway and says:

And now about the Cauldron sing

Like Elues and Fairies in a Ring,

While I am sure a few scattered references can be found in the period literature of witches doing a ring dance there are not many.  Indeed, ring dances are the domain of nymphs and fairies.

From where did Foreman get his “women feiries or Nimphes,” one can quite properly wonder.  Why do Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth do a ring dance?

The mystery only deepens from here.  The seemingly most likely answer is that Foreman got the detail wrong.  He made a mistake.  That has been the consensus of scholarly opinion on the matter since.  But, if he did, it was a coincidence of astronomical proportions.

Shakespeare’s source for Macbeth was almost entirely Holinshed’s Chronicle.  It is from Holinshed that all episodes of the “Weird Sisters” are taken.

Herewith the foresaid women vanished immediatlie out of their sight.  This was reputed at the first but some vaine fantastical! illusion by Mackbeth and Banquho, insomuch that Banquho would call Mackbeth in iest, king of Scotland; and Mackbeth againe would call him in sport likewise, the father of manie kings. But afterwards the common opinion was, that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science, bicause euerie thing came to passe as they had spoken.[4]

The old chronicler identifies them as “nymphs or feiries”.

How did Foreman make the mistake of describing them precisely as Holinshed?  But differently from the text we have of Macbeth?  To consider Foreman’s account a simple mistake would require an astronomically improbable coincidence.

Only two other avenues of explanation would seem to remain.  First possibility, Foreman may have known his Holinshed intimately and by heart in order to have written a description of the play immediately after it was performed that subconsciously applied Holinshed’s terms instead of the terms we find in our text.  Second possibility, Holinshed’s terms came to him through the play he watched.  There was no mistake.  In 1611, the play actually featured “nymphs or feiries” rather than “beldams,” witches. 

This might also explain Hecate’s uncharacteristic call for her fellow sisters to do a ring dance.  The nymph’s, it would seem, did not survive a further rewrite by Thomas Middleton who counted upon witch scenes for some considerable part of his popularity as a playwright.  The ring dance the nymphs performed, however, was too popular a special effect to be foregone, so Hecate explains that she orders the witches to add a new twist to their shtick regardless of the expectations of the audience in such matters.

It seems quite probable, then, that we can assign Middleton’s rewrite to post-April 1611.  The Gunpowder Plot references so furiously debated in Authorship circles, then, are genuinely what they appear to be, and also were written by Middleton, post-1611, not by Shakespeare.

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[1] The Early Plays of Edward de Vere (William Shakespeare): Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584).  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T

[2] Furness, Howard.  A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Macbeth.  356.  “In this volume mention is made of the discovery among the Ashmolean MSS of notes on the performance of some of Shakespeare' s plays written by one who saw them acted during the lifetime of the Poet.  These notes ' bear the following title: "The Booke of Plaies and Notes thereof,… Formans, for common Pollicie,” and they were written by Dr Simon Forman, the celebrated Physician and Astrologer, who lived at Lambeth, the same parish in which Elias Ashmole afterwards resided.”

[3] Ibid., 356.

[4] Ibid.,  387.  Citing Holinshed’s Chronicles, I.iii.59.

• Edward de Vere’s Ulysses and Agamemnon. Highlighting the Real Issue.  October 30, 2018. “When I did return to investigate more deeply, the results were astonishing.  All tests indicated that the earlier play was incorporated in its entirety.”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. "Vere had been writing The Tempest for his daughter’s upcoming wedding.  Upon his death, his friend William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, who was known to have collected every printed and manuscript word he could get his hands on about the ongoing explorations in the South Atlantic, likely put on the final touches."
• Shakespeare on Gravity. August 26, 2018. “So carelessly does Shakespeare throw out such an extraordinary divination. His achievement in thus, as it were, rivalling Newton may seem in a certain sense even more extraordinary than Goethe's botanical and osteological discoveries;…”
• Let the sky rain potatoes! December 16, 2017. "In fact, the sweet potato had only just begun to be a delicacy within the reach of splurging poets and playwrights and members of the middle classes at the time that The Merry Wives of Windsor (the play from which Falstaff is quoted) was written.  The old soldier liked to keep abreast of the new fads."
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

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